EXCLUSIVE: I caught up with Carolco co-founder Mario Kassar, who had two recently deceased artists on his mind, and how they helped shape his highest-flying foreign sales company of the ‘80s. That would be director Ted Kotcheff, who essentially launched Carolco with First Blood, and Val Kilmer on The Doors, playing the iconic singer Jim Morrison even though Tom Cruise was desperate to play The Lizard King.
Kotcheff was integral in First Blood, even as the pic almost imploded when Sylvester Stallone decided his Rambo character wasn’t going to die, like in the book and the script. The film’s financing was structured heavily around Kirk Douglas, who on the morning of shooting, was set as Rambo’s handler Col Trautman. Determined that his character had to put his tortured Vietnam vet protégé out of his misery, Douglas was aghast at the Frankenstein monster he created, and the actor felt strongly this was the right outcome. When Stallone refused, Douglas balked and on the day that climactic scene was to be first scene they’d shoot, Douglas was on a plane home to LA.
Then there was Val Kilmer and The Doors, and how close that iconic role came to be played by Kilmer’s Top Gun rival Tom Cruise. Now, these tales are decades old, but they are a worthy reminder of the starring role that luck and playing hunches serve in the blockbuster game. Carolco’s rise and demise contained plenty of that. The company made, in short order, several of the decade’s biggest and most seminal global hits – Total Recall, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Basic Instinct, Cliffhanger, and Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs — and still went bankrupt after Showgirls and Cutthroat Island, within five years of that hit streak starting.
Take it away, Mario, starting with First Blood.
Sylvester Stallone Refuses Kirk Douglas Demand To Kill Rambo
“Ted Kotcheff was a deep friend and a very talented man, and I really loved him very much,” Kassar told Deadline. “I was brand new, just came to town and in those days, studios would never sell you any properties they have. So somebody brings me a book. I read it. I’m not an American, I come from Europe and I don’t really know about the problems Americans are having after Vietnam. I love the idea and the book and me and Andy Vajna, we track down who owned the rights. His name was Jack Schwartzman, and I think he saw me as a pigeon and thought, I finally have somebody I can sell this to, somebody I can unload all my expenses on.”
The past development costs were considerable and Kassar would learn he was hardly the first to try.“He said, we have about 13 different screenplays that we can have with the rights of the book, because they’d done so many,” he said. “They had a draft for Steve McQueen, one for Al Pacino, one for Harrison Ford. Name every big star in Hollywood, and there was a draft for them. I had to buy all the drafts and the book, and it was maybe $400,000 or $500,000.”
Kassar then found the perfect filmmaker for First Blood, in Kotcheff. His qualification? He was the only filmmaker that Kassar knew.
“I used to go to this French restaurant Maison, and met Ted because he was French Canadian, and I spoke French, and we became very close friends,” Kassar said. “He was the only director I knew in the whole town. So now I have this book, and I said, ok, I need a director. I said, Ted, I got this book. He said, you kidding? I love this book. Yes, I want to do it.”
Next, Kassar saw that Stallone was coming off a couple flops including Paradise Alley. So he offered him above market value – back then it was around $2 million – with a deal that would include the flexibility that would become a Carolco trademark.“He said he’d do it for a certain amount of money, which of course was higher than his normal fee,” Kassar said. “And I said, well, the only way for me to get this actor is to say either I say yes or I’m never going to get an actor in the movie of so-called Big Stars, right? I mean, nobody knows who the fu*k I am. So I said, ok, but I’ll pay you this, and then I’ll defer you this from the network sales, because in those years you could sell to the networks for a lot of money, which was different than today. There was the network sale, there was cable with HBO, there was all kind of different US things that you could sell. Anyway, they agreed. He finally came on board, and now I have Sly.”
Well, for a moment anyway.
“I have a little up and down with Sly because at one stage, he changed his mind. His manager, Herb Nanas, said, well, he doesn’t think he wants to do it. I went to see Herb. I said, what is this? Then they gave me whatever reason he doesn’t want to do it. So then we going down the elevator, and I thought, how can this guy change his mind in five minutes? I mean, my God. Then I went back up to the office, and this was all by instinct.”
Mixed with desperation.
“I knocked at the door. I said, Herb, I don’t want him to do it anymore because we can’t force an actor to do something he doesn’t want to. But I knew [Stallone] was rewriting this part, he was basically retouching the screenplay. I said, can he at least for free finish the draft he’s working on at least because he knows the character so well? Within a week, and they called me and they said, once he got into it, now he really wants to do it. Which basically was my way to get back into the game.”
Kassar covered the budget partly because of Stallone, but the film would be worth more in foreign presales money if there was another star to play Rambo’s handler, Colonel Trautman. Kassar was told to get Kirk Douglas, whose name had value. Off to San Francisco, where Douglas was doing a play with Burt Lancaster. Kassar met him in his dressing room and Douglas became a quick yes, with one condition. He’d read past drafts and passed on the role, because he felt that the death of Rambo was narratively the right thing to do. After Trautman hears his confession and realizes the depths of his PTSD, there is no good way for the killing machine he created to go on.
“He knew about the book and said yes, I would love to do it, but in the end, I have to kill him,” Kassar recalled. “It’s my first movie and I say, yeah, of course you kill him. And then we made the deal and all of a sudden, we have Kirk, we have Stallone. I announced the movie, and everybody was like, we don’t know those guys. Let’s wait and see. Nobody would buy it.”
Undaunted, Kassar kept going.
“I got my private money from a banker in Paris,” Kassar said. “It was my godfather, and I got $18 million cash to make the movie. It was like a lot of money. My God, I’d put everything at stake.”
So there was plenty of consternation on the eve of the production start in Vancouver, when Kassar asked his director, Kotcheff to settle the matter of whether Rambo would be alive for the final credits.
“The first scene was supposed to be the one where Trautman shoots Sly,” Kassar said. “He’s crying about Vietnam, how nobody wanted him, and then Kirk Douglas shoots him. It’s in the book, and the screenplay. Night before we do that scene, I had a pre-shoot party, invited the crew, and told Ted, ‘do me a favor, you have to tell Kirk Sly’s not agreeing to be shot in the movie. Please work it out now and make sure that it’s happening, because if not, what are we going to do tomorrow?
Ted comes back three or four hours later and came up with a smile and said everything was hunky dory. I was happy. Until 6:30 the next morning when I get a phone call. They said, Mr. Douglas took a limo and went to the airport. He’s left for LA. I said, what?”
After Kotcheff’s pep talk, Kassar learned, “Kirk had gone to see Stallone and said, today, I shoot you. He said, no, you’re not shooting me. Kirk said, then I’m leaving. He said, goodbye, went to the airport and took a plane out.”
Even that would not slow Kassar: “I waited till it was like nine o’clock in the morning, and from the Vancouver set I called every agent in town. I said, you know what? I don’t care how tall. I don’t care how small. I don’t care how fat, I don’t care how he looks. I need an actor in five hours here. Richard Crenna was available, and he liked the role. He came, got fitted, and that’s how Crenna became the actor. He thanked me forever. He got three movies out of it.” Kassar met Douglas after, and said the actor grudgingly acknowledged the move was the right one, not dramatically as satisfying as what he’d signed on for, but because it became Rambo muscled his way into a five-movie franchise that grossed over $850 million worldwide, and allowed Carolco to go public and take bigger swings. Kassar knew he could exhale after working with Kotcheff on a 52-minute cut that was a sampler for the distributors that had waited because Kassar and Vajna were newcomers. They’d screened the cut to a 20-minute standing ovation, then took a short walk to a restaurant to complete the dog and pony show.
“It was maybe a seven minute walk to the restaurant, and I sold the foreign in seven minutes for an astronomical amount of money. Then U.S. theatrical rights, with no cable, no TV or anything.”
Opening Door For Tom Cruise As The Lizard King Instead Of Val Kilmer?
Kassar’s gamble worked brilliantly on First Blood, and he had the same gambler’s instincts when Carolco set up The Doors with Oliver Stone directing.
“We were casting the part of Jim Morrison, I get a call from Tom Cruise’s agent Paula Wagner,” Kassar said. “Tom Cruise is dying to pay Jim Morrison,” she tells me. And immediately my eyes go wide, thinking what Tom Cruise would mean to my foreign sales and the film’s budget. He came to lunch with me and Oliver, and I swear to you, I’ve never seen an actor almost begging. And this is Tom Cruise.”Even though Stone had recently worked with Cruise and won an Oscar directing Born on the Fourth of July – Cruise was nominated for playing Ron Kovic, Stone wasn’t swayed. Unbeknownst to Cruise or Kassar even, Stone had his heart set on another actor. The Doors’ music helped keep Stone going when he enlisted and fought in the Vietnam jungles, and the filmmaker knew just what he wanted to do.
“It was typical Oliver,” Kassar said. “He has to throw this curveball. He says, ‘I don’t think he’s the right guy. I think I have another guy in mind. And then he showed me Val in character, and I said, you know what? Fu*k, you’re right. Why do you have to be right? He looked exactly like him. I said, go for it. Val was so good in it, absolutely the right choice.”
Kassar had fond memories of traveling with Kilmer to promote the film, with the actor choosing to stay in character the entire time, which created challenges with passport control.
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